ParentDish has an airy, cheesed-up and dumbed-down feel with far too many hot pink accents and fugly sunflowers breaking up the blog posts. As of this morning, the most popular posts were 1) PD*poll: Should dad be banned from son’s graduation ceremony? 2) Prom dress gets student arrested. 3) Boy takes off Brett Favre jersey for the first time since 2003. Acronyms and entries peppered with ALL CAPS and italics abound.

ParentDish aims to be a bloggy, user-friendly site with the resources and depth found on other AOL Living sites, like AOL Body, AOL Food, AOL Home and more.

Programs are customized to meet local publishers’ needs and are being sold to their respective advertisers on a cost-per-time basis. Ad Links Plus sponsorships are available in daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi and annual subscriptions ranging in prices from $10-$20 per day to tens of thousands of dollars a month. The Quigo team handles the targeting, ad-serving, budget allocation, auction pricing, yield optimization, account management, billing and performance reporting for campaigns.

Tony Wills, Managing Director of Quigo’s newspaper publishers group stated “In developing Ad Links Plus we collaborated closely with our partners to meet their needs and find new creative ways to extend our ‘You Sell, We Sell’ model. We’re delighted that we’ve been able to implement a collaborative sales process at each publisher in which both online and print sales representatives participate.”

Quigo is a web site and content-targeted advertising company. The acquisition of Quigo lets AOL expand the use of contextual advertising – which matches ads to the contents of a Web page – across AOL’s own Web pages, as well as its third-party networks. Quigo will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL within its Platform-A organization. AOL originally announced its intention to acquire Quigo on November 7, 2007.

AOL may potentially spend $300 million on the company. Quigo assists advertisers place contextual ads on sites, allowing AOL to deliver more relevant ads to its users.

Quigo’s two major online advertising products are AdSonar, which is similar to Google AdSense, and FeedPoint, which places ads on online publishing sites or search results.

The company currently has $45 million of investments from Highland Capital, Steamboat Ventures and other investment firms. This signifies the company’s presence in the online ad race.

The newly branded AdSonar platform will allow advertisers to buy performance-based, content-targeted advertising by clicking on contextual “sponsored links” throughout the site. Quigo’s sales team will process purchases.

This platform offers full transparency and control, giving advertisers a say on what page, topic or keyword their ads are placed. The two companies will also work together to test new targeting methods and ad formats as well as pricing options.

Henry Vogel, Quigo’s CRO said “TheStreet.com has a valuable readership base that advertisers are keen to target. We are looking forward to partnering with TheStreet.com to deliver ever more useful advertising to its readers and powerful solutions to online marketers.”

Cliff Sloan, publisher of Slate said in the release, “We are pleased to be working with Quigo to provide relevant advertising information to Slate’s active and engaged users.” Quigo CRO Henry Vogel stated, “We are delighted to welcome Slate into the AdSonar network. Slate’s strong editorial voice and unique daily content draw an attractive audience that advertisers are keen to target.”

Quigo has also announced recent AdSonar partnerships with other sites including ESPN.com and Forbes.com.

With Pixsy’s Media Search Platform, users can search for videos, images of local interests and other multimedia content. The portals will work with Quigo’s AdSonar online ad network so that national advertisers can offer content-targeted messages on a pay-for-performance basis.

With the first installment of the program to come later this quarter, Pixsy will use its technology to capture, index and deliver the most current and relevant thumbnail images and video. This will enable users’ access to location-and topic-specific visual content when they use certain keywords. Quigo will enable local and national marketers to bid on pay-for-performance advertising by using a customized private-label version of its AdSonar platform.

In a press statement, Pixsy CEO, Chase Norlin said, “By leveraging Quigo’s sophisticated content-targeting technology and pay-for-performance advertising platform, we will be able to offer users more relevant information, generate more revenue for publishers and offer advertisers greater value.”

Quigo’s newest partner, Forbes.com, one of the leading online business news and lifestyle media publishers, has just signed a multi-year deal that will place contextual ads powered by Quigo’s AdSonar platform on all Forbes.com websites.

The name of Quigo’s game is control and transparency. While advertisers using Google’s AdWords or Yahoo’s Overture have little say in how their ads are placed, Quigo encourages publishers to develop their own advertiser relationships and offers the ability to target ads by category, location, specific site, or even specific web page, all on an auction basis.

Quigo controls less than 10% of the contextual advertising market, but it has focused on signing up recognizable brands. Over the past few months, Quigo has signed deals with publishers like ESPN.com, the Cox Newspaper group, and FoxNews.com.

“The AdSonar platform, technology and approach will help Forbes.com optimize revenues across our business news and lifestyle pages while also enabling us to build a strategic asset in one of the most dynamic and fastest growing segments of the online advertising market,” said Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller in a statement.

Now that we’re almost halfway through Q1 2007, ADOTAS decided to catch up with the goings-on at Quigo by chatting with its Chief Revenue Officer Henry Vogel, a former eBay exec who left the sunny West coast for the brights lights and big city action of New York. Through in-person chats, phone conversations and email communique, Vogel provides plenty of insight by not only tracing his career path, but the AdSonar infrastructure, its competitive advantages , as well as some surprising 2007 forecasts for the online advertising industry.

Hi Henry, so how did you land at Quigo?

Prior to joining Quigo in January 2006, I was at eBay looking after Internet Marketing and Business Development. Quigo was a partner of ours, but the more personal introduction and connection to Quigo came when Marty Abbott — the former CTO of eBay and a colleague of mine — joined in 2005.

What attracted you to Quigo?

I’m excited and passionate about high growth, technology-enabled consumer businesses. And although I left my heart in San Francisco, I got excited about what Quigo was doing, the team that Mike Yavonditte, our CEO, was building and the opportunity to be part of a company with huge upside. Without sounding too hyperbolic, I truly believe we’re in the middle of an advertising revolution, perhaps even only in the second or third innings. And I believe Quigo’s team, technology and approach can have a significant impact on the shape of that revolution.

Quigo seems to be on a hot streak having landed in short succession ESPN, CareerBuilder.com, Fodors.com. The Daily News and the Internet Broadcasting network of sites. What’s going on, why would CNN ask if Quigo is the next Google?

That was a very flattering assessment of Quigo’s future potential. While obviously not wanting to take anything for granted, we’re certainly pleased by the market reception our approach to performance marketing has received. Let’s face it; there are all kinds of way to advertise on the Internet now. I think Quigo is gaining momentum because our ad network, technology and approach offer distinct advantages for both publishers and advertisers. Put simply, I think we offer one of the most dynamic and fast-growing segments of advertising – a better mousetrap. Our premium properties and transparent approach provides advertisers with the ability to target their performance ads on some of the web’s best-known brands. For publishers we make them more money and help them own relationships with their advertisers, which gives them a strategic asset instead of just a one-time check.

Exactly what is auction-based, pay-per-click advertising and how does it differ from search or contextual placement on a given site?

Most advertisers are familiar with bidding on keywords with the search providers like Google and Yahoo!. Our bidding process is not all that different with the exception that we offer a lot more transparency. Advertisers can target nationally or locally, and bid for specific sites, individual pages or sections within those sites, and topics or keywords that are most relevant to their product or service offering. They know exactly where their ads will run and only pay when users click on their ads and come to their sites. As such, they can fully optimize their returns at a very granular level, and also gain the brand-building benefits from having their ads appear on premium websites that are most relevant to their audience.

Since advertisers can buy against keywords or bid on specific page placements across multiple sites, how is Quigo different from a contextual network like Burst or 24/7 Real Media?

That’s a great question. In many respects it gets to the heart of our approach as we’re blending the benefits of a traditional media buy with the benefits of content-targeting and pay-for-performance marketing. Traditional ad networks sell blocks of inventory, typically on a CPM basis and with varying degrees of control and assurance over placements. With Quigo, advertisers have total control of where and when their ads will appear. They know that their ad won’t end up in the backwaters of some off brand site they’ve never heard of that might be counted by an ad network as a served impression. And, 100% of our inventory is priced on a performance basis.

Advertisers will be able to place ads on the site’s Resource Center, a section that offers job hunters advice on everything ranging from training and education to interviewing, resumes, and starting your own business. Advertisers will be able to target ads by specific page and keyword, which means that ads in the Resource Center will be able to reach individuals intent on performing a specific action.

“Offering this functionality provides more options for online advertisers who want to reach a vast audience of career-minded individuals,” said Hope Gurion, CareerBuilder’s VP of business development in a statement. “With Quigo, we are now able to create opportunities for advertisers that fit a variety of budgets and business models, as well as maximize the relevancy of advertising to our visitors.”

Advertisers will be able to see exactly where their ads are running within the CareerBuilder site. CareerBuilder.com, owned by media groups Gannet Co., Tribune and McClatchey, has more than 23 million registered users, and lists more than 1.5 million jobs. The AdSonar platform is also used by websites like ESPN.com, ABC News, The New York Times, along with sites for local newspapers.